Rumorama: Xbox 360 With Built-In HD-DVD Drive?
Screw free movies, it looks like Microsoft is getting ready to make the one move that will ensure the 360's long-term competitive edge against the for-now embattled PS3: a built-in high-capacity optical drive. The Aussie tech gurus at Smarthouse report that Toshiba and Microsoft are hard at work on a new Xbox that will incorporate a built-in HD-DVD drive as well as "new entertainment software," whatever that means.
"The PS3 has been extremely successful for Sony in getting Blu-ray off the ground and for Microsoft, the omission of a built in HD DVD player is set to hurt sales going forward as consumers are aware that the PS3 comes with a Blu-ray player."
Been there; heard that - this is a good step for Microsoft for obvious reasons, but coming tardily to the table may not pack as much punch as you'd think: while a HD-DVD drive in the 360 will start giving HD-DVD the install base it needs to survive (not that we don't desperately want the format wars to be over with), but there's still a big problem: games.
The PS3, having launched with Blu-ray, has all of its games stored on a high-capacity format disc. Even if the 360 comes with a built-in HD-DVD drive, Microsoft can't possibly switch over from selling games on DVD discs to games on HD-DVD discs - leaving it half-in, half-out. The 360's install base, which of course has an incredible lead over the newer PS3, may well be the ball and chain bound to Microsoft's gaming ankle.
That said, if I were buying a 360, I'd surely be happy if it came with a high-capacity drive rather than Ye Olde DVD - even one I wouldn't use. Unless it drives up the cost of the system. Like Liberace at a Rams game, I'm not quite sure how I feel.
Toshiba Working With Microsoft On New Entertainment Xbox [Smarthouse]
[via GamesIndustry.biz]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany on 19 October 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: hd-dvd, microsoft, toshiba, xbox 360
This will be part of a huge Microsoft/Toshiba media center that had Tivo, disc burners and everything else. It'll cost $650-800.
And it won't be out till next Christmas, by which time everything will pretty much be over anyway. Luckily for MS, they're just a diode change away from being able to read both discs
Blu-Ray is stomping HD-DVD's butt into the dirt (like by more than a 2-to-1 margin in sales), and frankly I'll be shocked if this time next year HD-DVD isn't a distant memory, kinda like Divx movies competing with DVDs were in 1997 (anyone else remember when Divx was an actual format, and no the ironic name for a video codec?)
What a blatant "me too" product.
I hope this means the five-syllabled monster is languishing. Blu-Ray isn't perfect, but man is it better than HD DVD. Every movie on the format is in VC-1 whether it's the right fit or not, and it's usually not. It mattes out similar browns and blacks like the crappy streaming video it evolved from, and film scratches and noise go nuclear with its strict pixelation. It looks like the half-step up that it is, and it's already running out of space. HD DVD can't even hold a full-length movie in MPEG-2, much less have space left over for uncompressed sound. Let Laserdisc II die already. I want me some even-numbered Star Trek movies in HD, and I'm not settling for 30 gigs of VC-1 and Dolby.